Thursday, December 24, 2009

It had to happen eventually... For years, some creationists have been trying to align Genesis 1 with geological history from a so-called 'scientific creationism' perspective. Now we have an evolutionist, Andrew Parker, claiming that Genesis 1 perfectly describes evolutionary history. Here is the alignment he proposes:

Genesis

The scientific history of the earth

And God said, 'Let there be light'

The formation of the sun (around 5,000 million years ago)

And God said, 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear'

The formation of the seas, and the separation of land areas (around 4,200 million years ago)

The Cambrian explosion — evolution's Big Bang (beginning around 520 million years ago)

God created the great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind ...

Life was exclusively marine at this time. It was in this period that all the animal phyla that exist today evolved their characteristic forms. These facts are not common knowledge. Only an experienced biologist would know this.

... and every winged fowl after his kind

All animals adapted to the vision of predators, except for birds, which could afford not to because they can escape predation through flight, and so generally can avoid camouflage colours. It is fascinating that sea creatures and birds should be singled out. These are, respectively, the main characters and exceptions in life's history book.

On the basis of these "observations", Andrew Parker claims that the Bible is scientifically accurate. But it doesn't take much to discover that Parker is reading a great deal into the biblical text! Let's just check one phrase that Parker uses to prove the Bible is scientifically accurate: Genesis 1:14-19 (NRSV) which reads:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

The description of these lights being 'in the dome of the sky' immediately identifies these objects as being heavenly bodies. As is well known, the ancient Near Eastern cultures understood the cosmos to be three-tiered — heaven, earth, underworld. The dome of the sky is clearly referring to heaven and it was understood, in these ancient cultures, to contain the sun, moon, and stars. The text speaks of two great lights to rule the day and night, plus the stars. It is impossible to avoid the implication that these are talking about the sun and moon.

But Parker reduces these six verses to the phrase to 'let there be lights ... to divide the day from night' and suggests that it refers to the evolution of the eye in animals. This interpretation of the text is laughable and completely disrespects the original genre and purpose of the text in its own cultural context!

Here's an alternative understanding of these verses: In ancient cosmology outside of Israel, the sun, moon, and stars had been put into place by the gods to regulate the seasons and the calendar. There was a strong "personal" attribution to these heavenly bodies. In the Genesis account, the author is removing this personal element and attributing the presence of these bodies to the creative work of God who is distinct from God's creation. The whole Genesis account can be demonstrated to have parallels in ancient Near Eastern culture and so it is unsurprising that many of the elements in the Genesis account are present. Genesis 1, amongst other purposes, is a polemic against the polytheistic and anthropomorphic cosmology of the time and the elements of the narrative can be demonstrated to be so.

But Parker has brought his own particular agenda to the text like many fundamentalist creationists do and tries to force a scientific reading onto the text. It is time to give up on this project. Genesis was never intended to be a scientific account of origins. Even a cursory consultation with a scholarly commentary on Genesis will show this. Those, including creationists, who persist in trying to coerce Genesis to prove what they want ultimately become an embarrassment. The whole point of the two creation accounts is overlooked and the literary qualities and original authors' intent becomes completely lost in hermeneutical servitude to a modern, 21st century agenda.

So the explicit project of The Genesis Enigma is a complete failure and is not worth reading with that particular interest in mind. However, there is some value in the book if the thesis of proving Genesis's scientific accuracy is abandoned. The very large majority of the book is an engaging account of the development of evolutionary thought over the centuries. Read for this, the book is quite enlightening and enjoyable. Parker is certainly qualified to write on natural history. But when it comes to interpreting the Bible, he goes completely astray.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Is it always wrong to lie? What sort of a society would we have if we always told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Is a belief in God merely a lie that has evolved to provide a delusional sense of hope?

All of these questions, and more, are evoked by Ricky Gervais's The Invention of Lying. Gervais is both writer and director of this lightweight comedy which starts off in a world where noone has ever lied — or even thought of doing so. In this society, not only do they not lie; they are completely ruthless at telling the whole truth even if it hurts others. Lying is not only nonexistent in personal life, but the very concept of fiction doesn't exist. Movies consist of actors merely reading historical facts.

Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) is a screenwriter whose life is pretty boring, he can't get the girl of his dreams (easily played by Jennifer Gardner), and he has been fired from work for not being able to produce a movie that is successful. One day, he discovers the possibility of telling others things that are not true when he spontaneously lies about how much money he has in his bank account. His relationships improve, he acquires more things, he lies to his mother who is dying about life after death and to the whole world about the existence of a big man in the sky deciding the fate of everyone. Mark becomes famous and may even get the girl of his dreams after all.

The Invention of Lying has received very mixed reviews. Although the movie is not great literature, I found it conceptually provocative enough to enjoy it and evocative of the sorts of questions I have listed above at the beginning of this review.

The subject of lying is a complicated one because we can all think of situations in which we may justify not telling the exact truth — either by remaining silent or actively promoting a non-truth. Even the ninth of the Ten Commandments says we are not to bear false witness against a neighbour but it doesn't say that all lying is wrong.

In the Bible there are examples of lying for altruistic reasons. In relation to the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), Shemesh (2002) offers some examples of lies that seem to be acceptable:

David lies to Ahimelech (1 Sam. 21:3) and misleads King Achish of Gath (1 Sam. 21:14) in order to save his own life. Saul’s daughter Michal lies to her father’s messengers in order to save her husband David’s life (1 Sam. 19:11–16), and then lies to her father in order to escape his rage (1 Sam. 19:17). Jonathan, too, lies to his father to save his friend David’s life (1 Sam. 20:28–29), and the woman from Bahurim lies to Absalom’s servants to save David’s spies Ahimaaz and Jonathan, hidden in the well in her courtyard (2 Sam. 17:18–20). Proof that God may actually approve of such lies may be derived from His rewarding of the midwives in Egypt, who lied to Pharaoh out of compassion for the lives of the male children born to the Hebrew women (Exod. 1:15–21). A further indication to that effect is the narrator’s comment concerning Hushai’s deception of Absalom by pretending to support him: “The Lord had decreed that Ahithophel’s sound advice be nullified, in order that the Lord might bring ruin upon Absalom” (2 Sam. 17:14).

All of this is to merely point out that lying is not as black and white as we might like to think. In fact, as The Invention of Lying implies, a certain type of lying might very well be required for social facilitation. Every day most of us lie about how we are feeling or what we think of a colleagues new hair style if we are asked (for example).

Please don't misunderstand me. The Invention of Lying doesn't handle any of these issues with any sophistication. In fact, the exploration of lying in this story is quite superficial. For example, a good proportion of the movie is about the alleged delusional nature of a belief in God. While Christians will certainly quibble with this, many of the associated simplistic theologies about predestination, suffering, and God's intervention in life are quite rightly satirised as ridiculous. The scariest point in the movie is the way in which some people are prone to believe anything they are told.

Although The Invention of Lying could have been executed better, acted better, and explored the issues in more depth, the fact that it tackles such a significant subject has to be commended.